by Calvin Robinson on February 1, 2010.

All companies want to keep your custom. Now, most companies try to win you over with brand loyalty, but the frustrating thing about tech companies is that they can use their technology to trap you. The very gadget or software that you’ve spent your hard earned money on, will make it as difficult as possible, for you to switch to an alternative.

The average iPhone owner for example, spends £80 in Apple’s App Store. When I recently switched to a Google Nexus One, I lost use of all £80 worth of my apps. That money is now wasted, those apps have absolutley no use to me anymore, because I cannot install them on my new phone.

Online stores are become more and more popular with handheld devices. I’m not talking about your ebuyer or bestbuy, I’m talking about your App Store or Market Place. The problem is, they’re all locked-down to some extent.

Fair enough, if I buy another android phone I can install all the apps I’ve bought on my Google Nexus One, as I did when I moved from an iPhone 3G to a 3GS. The same is probably true for Kindle to Kindle 2.

But what happens when Apple stop selling the iPhone, or someone releases a better eBook reader than the Kindle, or if Google end the Android project? All of your purchased applications, books, mp3s become useless.

We need to make things transferable!

This is the exact reason I used to rip my mp3s (before the magnificence that is Spotify), instead of paying for a service like Napster or Yahoo Music. Most of those services were DRM based. There were just too many restrictions on what you can or cannot do with the music you purchase.

So before you splash out on the iPad, Kindle or any other eBook reader – and before you upgrade to an iPhone, Nexus One or other smartphone – remember, the money you spend on books/apps/music for that device, may well be thrown away with the device.

Why should you have to hack your Kindle in order to read eBooks you obtained from somewhere other than Amazon (see: over-priced)? Why should you have to jailbreak your iPhone to use apps that Apple doesn’t want to ‘approve’? If you ask me, you shouldn’t,

by Calvin Robinson on June 9, 2009.

There’s something wrong about that picture, I have to admit. But when I got invited to a round-table style conference at MS, I could hardly refuse. I actually had a good time too. They were discussing their web products, to a small group of start ups. I’ll give a quick roundup of what they discussed.

Continue Reading »

by Calvin Robinson on May 13, 2009.

Get MMS and Tethering running on your iPhone:

So iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 5 is out … but before you go and upgrade, you may want to read on. MMS and Tethering are built into the current betas of OS 3.0, and we have discovered how to access them.Sporkings, May 2009

Checkout the whole article.

by Calvin Robinson on September 2, 2008.

Anyone who watches Diggnation will probably know what I’m talking about here. In episode 163, they played a reggae ringtone, sent in by one of the viewers.

I loved it, so I downloaded it and converted it into an m4r format file, ready for my iPhone 3G.

Here they are, in case anyone else wants a copy;

If you’ve Jailbreaked your iPhone, you can ssh/sftp the full length version straight to Library/Ringtones: hippie-glen-netflix-long

If however, you’re running a vanilla straight-from-the-box iPhone, you’ll need the 30 second clip, to import and sync via iTunes: hippie-glen-netflix-short

Thanks d0n1, nice work.